Swapping Motherboards Under Windows XP

Recently, I ran across an interesting problem when I was swapping motherboards on a testbed.

Microsoft has stated that an upgrade like a motherboard swap (all other things remaining the same) should not force the user to reactivate Windows XP. As it turns out, that’s not quite true, although the problem seems to be related to glitches in the operating system, not any conspiracy on Microsoft’s part. However, the technical issues surrounding this are enough to make you tear your hair out–and worry about losing valuable data–so I thought I’d share my experience.

The Easiest UpgradeRecently, we obtained an Intel D850MV motherboard with USB 2.0 down, in the form of the familiar NEC µPD720100 USB 2.0 host controller coupled to the SMSC LPC47M132 low pin count (LPC) bus I/O controller. So I thought I’d upgrade one of the testbeds here so I could give it a spin, which was the beginning of a long journey.

The particular testbed system I chose looked to be a straightforward swap. The unit was running a socket 423 Willamette (Pentium 4) processor–the old style P4 socket. It used an Intel D850GB board that included the Intel 850 chipset. The D850MV that was to be installed in place of the socket 423 board also used the Intel 850, but had the newer socket 478 format. I planned on using a stock Willamette 478 pin CPU in the new board, to minimize any differences in hardware.

To summarize, here’s the table of old versus new:

Component

Old

New

Motherboard

Intel D850GB, Intel 850 chipset

Intel D850MV w/onboard USB 2.0, Intel 850 chipset

CPU

2GHz Pentium 4 (Willamette), 256KB of L2 cache, 423 pin package

2GHz Pentium 4 (Willamette), 256KB of L2 cache, 478 pin package

Memory

512MB PC800 RDRAM

512MB PC800 RDRAM

Boot Drive

Western Digital WD400BB

Western Digital WD400BB

Secondary Drive

IBM Deskstar 75 (45GB)

IBM Deskstar 75 (45GB)

Primary Optical

Toshiba SD-1502 DVD-ROM drive and HP DVD100i DVD+RW drive

Toshiba SD-1502 DVD-ROM drive and HP DVD100i DVD+RW drive

Floppy

3.5″, 1.44MB

3.5″, 1.44MB

Graphics

VisionTek GeForce3

VisionTek GeForce3

Audio

Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer

Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer

Ethernet

3Com 3C905-TX

3Com 3C905-TX

Note that all other components–graphics, hard drives, and optical storage were identical.

Pre-Installation PrepI had a lot of software installed on the testbed that I wanted to avoid reinstalling. There was also some data I wanted to keep, so I really didn’t want to reformat. (Okay, so I figured I could be lazy, because it looked like an easy swap). I did use Norton Ghost to copy the partition from the boot drive just in case I ran into trouble.

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